Undergraduates Aren’t Sure About Postgraduate Study. These Factors Encourage Them to Apply.

A wide network of relatives, professors, and people already working in a field offer career advice to white undergraduates who are likely to pursue an advanced degree, and those white students are more likely than their black, Hispanic, and Asian peers to have received such guidance.

That finding, released on Tuesday as part of a Gallup survey commissioned by two law-school associations, was one of several that suggested universities should attempt to widen access to advising so that all students who could excel in postgraduate study are encouraged to do so.

“Unless our undergraduates are exposed to and consider investing in higher degrees,” said Kent D. Syverud, Syracuse University’s chancellor and president, on Tuesday, “this engine of social mobility stops.”

The survey results were released at a moment of hand-wringing among graduate- and professional-school administrators. Applications to American business schools’ graduate programs dropped this year, and law schools, despite an uptick last year, have seen declines in applications since 2010. Graduate enrollment at American universities is about flat, but international interest has fallen, the Council of Graduate Schools reported this month.

The two law-school groups — the Association of American Law Schools and the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT — hired Gallup to better understand what factors might encourage undergraduates to go to the next level, or discourage them. Gallup also examined interest in other types of graduate programs: M.A.s, M.S.s, Ph.D.s, M.B.A.s, M.D.s, and other master’s degrees (in public health or social work, for example). More than 22,000 undergraduates at 25 four-year universities likely to send students on to advanced degrees responded to the survey.

Here are three additional takeaways from the survey’s findings:

Many people from many different backgrounds are interested in pursuing postgraduate study.

Female and nonwhite students are more likely than male and white students to express interest in pursuing an advanced degree. Black undergraduates made up 8 percent of students likely to pursue an advanced degree and 5 percent of students unlikely to do so, and Hispanic students were 13 percent of those likely to pursue an advanced degree and 9 percent of those not likely to do so.

Individual degrees saw more complex patterns among those likely or less likely to pursue them. Men were more likely than women to consider an M.B.A., and white undergraduates were less likely than black, Hispanic, or Asian undergraduates to consider medical school. About a third of Asian, black, and white students wanted to pursue a Ph.D., but the figure was slightly higher — 37 percent — for Hispanic students.

First-generation students don’t ask their families about postgraduate study, and may suffer for it.

Among undergraduates likely to pursue an advanced degree, first-generation students were far less likely to ask family members and relatives for advice on their career paths than were students with at least one parent who had earned a bachelor’s, postgraduate, or professional degree.

Seventy percent of those with at least one parent holding a postgraduate or professional degree said they had relied on their family members and relatives for guidance. Just 38 percent of those with parents who had earned less than a bachelor’s degree said they had relied on family members and relatives.

The finding is intuitive, but it reminds administrators that they must monitor access to information, said John Valery White, a law professor and former provost at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, “so that we’re not leaving valuable, talented people behind.”

More troubling, said Dawn Royal, an analytics specialist at Gallup, was that first-generation students weren’t “piling up” on any other sources for guidance. “They may just have less sources altogether.”

People are interested in postgraduate study because they’re passionate — and because it might pay.

The top three factors that influenced student interest in graduate or professional school, outside of law school, were high interest in the work, high-paying jobs in the field, and opportunities for advancement in the field. Fewer undergraduates likely to pursue an advanced degree said they were driven by the prestige or because their families said it would be a good choice.

Ranking fourth was the belief that graduate and professional degrees prepare students for “many types of jobs.” That’s a familiar refrain for Ph.D. students who, facing dim career prospects in academe, have attempted to show their skills’ application to business fields.

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.